Assignment 2 - Averi Ricks - Books I've Read

As I think about the number of books I've read in the past twelve months, I've realized that I haven't read a lot. I used to love reading when I was younger, so this makes me a little disappointed in myself. In the past year I've read The Joy Luck Club, Mosquitoland, The Great Gatsby, and I revisited the The Mortal Instruments book series. Mosquitoland is about a girl, Kim, who goes cross country by herself to try to save her sick mom. She meets many people along the way, but the people that stuck out to me the most were Walt, a boy with down syndrome, and Beck, who she met earlier on in the story. There's a moment where Beck is driving Kim and Walt to see a baseball game. Walt was super excited and was being loud in the backseat and Kim tried to calm him down. Beck then started explaining how it's weird that as a society, whenever people with a disorder like down syndrome get really excited, we try to calm them down, but we wouldn't do that if one of our friends were to get excited about something. This is something I think about constantly because I see it happen so much and honestly it makes me a little sad that we almost try to suppress their happiness because they express it differently than we might. The Mortal Instruments is a series I became obsessed with in seventh grade because we moved seats in my English class and I wanted to fit in with the people I sat with. My grandparents spent $500 on the entire series that Christmas and I only got halfway through the second to last book. The main reason I stopped reading it was because my friends had long finished it and moved on. I felt guilty (and I still do) because my grandparents spent so much money and always tried to finish it but never could. This summer I realized fantasy just isn't a genre I like. That entire process has taught me not to do anything just because everyone else is doing it. I know it's super cheesy, but I still feel really bad every time I see them on my bookshelf and it's a constant reminder.